Keystone Pipeline – A Texan’s View

Michael Tobis, editor-in-chief of Planet3.0 and site cofounder, has always been interested in the interface between science and public policy. He holds a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences where he developed a 3-D ocean model on a custom computing platform. He has been involved in sustainability conversations on the internet since 1992, has been a web software developer since 2000, and has been posting sustainability articles on the web since 2007.

The references in this interview to the “foreignness” of the pipeline, and the idea that climate change means “we’re in trouble in this country” are disturbing if familiar. Libertarians are supposed to support free trade, and climate is obviously not something that recognizes borders. This is how real life Texas libertarians think.

On the other hand I really do like listening to Texans. I enjoy the speech patterns, and I am as amused as anyone by the oddly cheerful belligerence (“health problems”!) even as I am discouraged by it.

You can argue that this fellow’s conversion on climate change is shallow and self-interested. Well, maybe so. Not everyone has loyalties to the world. People need to see the ways in which fossil fuels threaten their own lives and their own communities. That’s not going to be easy in Texas, where fossil fuels have made so many people, including the interviewee, quite well off.

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